A24’s latest niche market is the love triangle. See: Past Lives, Challengers, and Materialists (yeah, those are all written by the same married couple, what of it?). But on Tuesday they debuted the love triangle to end all love triangles, literally. In the Eternity trailer, Joan (Elizabeth Olsen) wakes up in the afterlife and immediately faces the highest-stakes choice she’ll ever make: spend eternity with her second husband of many decades Larry (Miles Teller), or her first husband who died young (Callum Turner)?
If that wasn’t intense enough, Olsen only has one week to decide between the two loves of her life. It’s unclear why Turner got to hang around “the Junction” for decades waiting for Joan to show up while Joan only gets days to choose, but it does allow Turner some swoon-worthy moments: “When eternity’s on the line, seems like nothing,” he says of the long wait for his wife. “That’s a good opener,” Joan has to admit. Larry may find it tough to compete with his wife’s long-lost war hero husband, but as he insists, he can be romantic too. “I don’t care where we end up, just as long as we’re together,” he tells Joan, adding later, “Knowing you’re happy makes me happy.”
The afterlife (or at least “the Junction”) in Eternity has a Good Place-esque cutesy cheer coupled with a capitalistic sense of competition—not just between eternal companions, but also among the possible locales to spend forever. There are sign spinners and spokespeople representing places like “Smoker’s World,” “Studio 54 World,” or “Man Free World.” We also meet two afterlife coordinators, played by the delightful duo John Early and Oscar winner Da’Vine Joy Randolph. David Freyne (Dating Amber) directed the film from a script he co-wrote with Pat Cunnane (Designated Survivor). Eternity will have its world premiere at the Toronto Film Festival in September before debuting in theaters in November.
